


A Good Idea At The Time

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Chuck (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bryce Larkin went into the spy business because it sounded like fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Idea At The Time

**Author's Note:**

> The pinch hit that made me go "Eeeeee! *wants*" as I saw it go past. Thanks to Tiko for the fabulous beta and the guys at #yuletide for being insane.
> 
> Written for mardia

 

 

Bryce Larkin went into the spy business because it sounded like fun. He stayed in the spy business because he really liked to wake up in the morning and to not be dead. Being a spy didn't exactly come with a retirement plan.

He had his own plans for that.

+

He'd grown up living off-center and a step to the left. Everyone wanted to put him into boxes: the teachers thought of him as their brilliant A-student, the coach called him the star quarterback, the girls all just swooned when he walked past and the boys either loved him with fierce abandon or hated him with fiery passion. Bryce liked to play football, so he joined the team; he liked to do math problems, so he took AP Calculus; he liked sex, so he let the cheerleaders have their wicked way with him.

None of it was an attempt to fit in or be the cool kid. Somehow, that just always happened.

When he met Chuck for the first time, Bryce thought: Hey there, fellow traveler. There was something about Chuck that just rubbed him exactly the right way.

Then he learned that Chuck also put him in a box, and the box was marked: Mine.

Somehow, Bryce wasn't bothered at all.

+

Meeting Sarah had been a revelation. They were two professionals first and always, and they had really good sex. Bryce didn't have to pretend about being in love with her when they pretended about everything else.

That he did fall in love with her, a little, was a nice bonus.

+

Bryce killed a lot of bad guys and some good guys, but he never killed someone who didn't have it coming. For varying definitions of having it coming.

The guy who threatened Chuck's life? Didn't have the time to finish his sentence.

Bryce never felt remorse - he had learned to think ahead of time about whether or not that shot was, well, righteous. Where Chuck was concerned, he never had to think at all.

+

Crashing Chuck's life like a frat party turned into some kind of habit. Bryce couldn't really feel guilty when just seeing Chuck still made his heart beat twice as fast. He was okay with the way Sarah looked at Chuck, the way Chuck looked at Sarah - really. He was fine every time he saw them together and couldn't quite figure out if he was more jealous of her or Chuck.

Actually, no, that was a lie. Sarah, definitely.

+

When he found them again, Chuck and Sarah were still dancing around the same issues. Somewhere between colleagues and friends, but never lovers. Nothing had changed between them because something between them had changed. Chuck looked at her the same way he had looked at Bryce on his last day in Stanford. He watched from a vantage point for a while until he couldn't stand not to be closer.

The closer he came to Chuck, the closer it seemed he needed to be.

There was safety in doing a mission on the other side of the planet. People shot at him there, but they never hit the heart.

All Chuck needed to do was look at him, with those glances that said "stay away" and "never leave" at the same time and Bryce lost all perspective. Chuck was conflicted. Bryce didn't have that problem. If it came down to a choice, he would choose Chuck above Sarah, and Chuck's happiness above his own. So he left them. Again.

+

Fulcrum, however, had other plans.

+

"I can't believe you just did that," Chuck said, pressed into the seat of the Mustang as though that would do him any good if they crashed into a tree.

Bryce grinned over at Chuck, reckless and high on adrenaline. "Fulcrum made their move; now it's our turn."

Chuck stared at him for a second, eyes wide, until he snapped back into panic mode. "Oh my god, the road! Watch the road!"

Bryce, of course, could see the road very well out of the corner of his eyes. If he had learned anything in his time as a superspy, it was how to navigate blind. Or preoccupied.

"Relax, Chuck," he said, turning back to the road mostly for Chuck's benefit, but also because there strategically placed obstacles ahead. He swerved around a parking truck, narrowly avoiding the black vans on the other side. Bryce dropped his right hand on the back of the seat, close enough to Chuck's neck to feel the heat.

"You just kidnapped me! Excuse me if that isn't in my top ten most relaxing moments."

Bryce laughed and tussled Chuck's hair, which earned him one of Chuck's death glares. His hand lingered more than it should, but Sarah wasn't there to look at him knowingly, so Bryce let it be what it was.

+

Chuck stared at the motel bed. The single bed. He was lucky they'd gotten that much, but Bryce was nothing if not resourceful. It helped that the clerk was a chick in her twenties with a distinct appreciation for gay porn, if her reading habits were anything to go by.

" _This_ was the last room they had?" Chuck sounded a bit hysterical.

Bryce nodded. "Yeah, sorry about that. I did say we should have stopped an hour ago at the Best Western."

Chuck glared at him. "After which you explained in great detail why that was not a good idea and would end in death and destruction."

Bryce grinned. "Nothing's perfect."

At that, Chuck deflated visibly. He looked for all the world like a kicked puppy and Bryce chastised himself for finding that endearing. He might be blindingly in love with Chuck but he wasn't a fucking girl.

"I think there might be a Trek marathon on," Bryce said with more levity than he felt.

Chuck looked hopeful. "Next Gen or Original?" There were only two types of Trek (Kirk era vs. Picard/Sisko) and none of them included Voyager (or Enterprise, but they didn't ever talk about that), so Bryce just flopped down on the bed and made an inviting gesture.

"Shall we see?"

+

Chuck drooled on his shirt as he slept. Bryce burshed his fingers through Chuck's hair in an effort to calm himself. Fulcrum might get them and if they didn't Casey and Sarah surely would. He'd left Chuck's handlers - his _girlfriend_ \- without so much as a word. If they weren't after them right now like hellhounds, Bryce would lose all faith in the universe.

Guilt didn't even make it into the top ten emotions he felt right now.

He'd bring Chuck back around to his friends, his family, in a roundabout way (for protection), but ultimately without much of a detour. Chuck lived for other people and those other people had long since stopped including Bryce. He'd lost that privilege years ago and hadn't exactly made things better between them in the past couple of months.

And yet.

"Chuck?" He spoke in a whisper, just a breath above Chuck's head.

"Hm?"

For how long Chuck had been awake was anyone's guess, but Bryce didn't pull back, didn't stop stroking the top of Chuck's head. If this was his only chance - and given the life expectancy of a deep cover, sometimes rogue agent it might well be his last - then he would say his piece. Chuck might never want to be near him in any significant way, but at least he wouldn't feel like a lost puppy half the time. When he wasn't in invincible power ranger mode.

"I don't want you dating Sarah."

Chuck tensed against his side, and Bryce held his breath. "I don't think that's any of your business." Which was, of course, not entirely true, considering Sarah had been his girlfriend and they'd never officially broken up. He'd just died that one time.

"It's not, Chuck. I don't want you to date her because I can't stand seeing you with her. Not..." He made a vague gesture. "Not because of _her_."

Chuck got it. Bryce could still read Chuck's moods as easily as he had at Stanford, and right now he was somewhere between astonished and freaked out. Bryce knew exactly how that felt.

"QamuSHa'," he whispered, because his voice was suddenly not that of Bryce Larkin, superspy, but of Bryce Larkin, geek in love. It left quite a bit to be desired.

Chuck just stared.

+

"A road trip?" Chuck still sounded incredulous, but he had arms full of snack food and a map, so he couldn't object to the idea that much.

Bryce shrugged. "It would throw Fulcrum off your scent for a while."

"But what about Ellie? Sarah and Casey will be after us, too."

Bryce thought of Sarah's face over the barrel of a gun. If she thought he'd done anything to hurt Chuck, he would very definitely go into "early retirement". Not that he could hurt Chuck. No more than he ever had, which actually didn't mean that much if he considered the day they'd thrown Chuck out of Stanford. He'd tried, though; tried in his own way to keep Chuck from harm.

"Together," Bryce said, throwing an arm around Chuck's shoulders and dislodging a pack of chips, "we can do anything."

+

When the call came, Bryce knew exactly what to do.

"Bryce Larkin," a voice said over the phone, not unpleasantly, "you've been burned."

He snapped the phone closed, gave it a little pat - it really was a very nice phone - and threw it out the open car window. It crashed somewhere behind them and would soon be ground into the dust of the road.

"Something important?" Chuck sounded as if he was only half paying attention, his eyes on the Nintendo DS Bryce had liberated for him from the Buy More, before Fulcrum had started blowing things up.

"No," Bryce said, "just tying up loose ends."

Chuck shot him a glare. "Yeah, right. Remind me never to be one of your loose ends."

Bryce laughed and said nothing.

+

The spy business was a bit like playing cards with people who already knew your hand. You could bluff and bluster, but they would always be one step ahead.

So he let them have what they thought they wanted. They branded him and put him in a box marked: Done.

Living in the same city as Chuck, being chained to it like a dog by the CIA, wasn't the worst thing that could happen to him. Casey still wanted to shoot him half the time, and Sarah shared the sentiment ever since his kidnapping of Chuck, but mostly he got to hang around the Buy More and scare the crap out of Morgan whenever he felt like it.

And when Chuck invited him over for Star Trek marathons, Bryce couldn't be happier. Sometimes they even watched one of the shows. 

 


End file.
